First things first. For those of you who weren’t old enough to watch prime time TV dramas in the 80s, go read up on “Who Shot J.R.”, then come back.

For the rest of us, November 21st was the 30th anniversary of the airing of that now famous episode of Dallas. At that time, it was the highest rated series finale of all time, with an estimated 83,000,000 viewers. In other words, “everyone” watched it. The suspense was incredible, the speculation fierce. People bought T-Shirts by the thousands that said “Who Shot J.R?” and “I Shot J.R.”. People placed bets on who pulled the trigger. It was the water cooler conversation of the summer.

It was the 1980′s equivalent of viral.

The Who Shot J.R. record was smashed in 1983, by the season finale of M*A*S*H, which got an estimated 105.3 million viewers. That episode still remains the most watched TV episode of all time. Advertisers paid $450,000 for a 30 second television commercial during the M*A*S*H broadcast (close to $1 million in today’s prices.) (Source: Advertising Age).

My husband and I were discussing the phenomena of huge TV ratings last night, and he brought up an excellent point. Mainstream TV will be hard pressed to ever achieve these numbers again. M*A*S*H may very well keep that record. Online media has diluted the viewership, and time-shifting, PVRs and digital downloads of TV shows have all made it more difficult to measure actual viewership.

Let’s face it – by YouTube standards, M*A*S*H’s numbers are pretty low. Justin Bieber’s video “Baby”, at the time of this posting has 391,277,874 views. 105 million seems like chump change compared to that. I could get into a whole thing about advertising rates on YouTube in comparison to mainstream TV, but I will leave that to the marketing experts.

Rather, I want to talk about the content and the viewers and what these kinds of trends mean to you as a content creator.

There’s a point when it’s about the eyeballs.
I’ve never watched the Justin Bieber video. In fact, I’ve never heard a Justin Bieber song, and I intend to keep it that way as long as possible. But, that hasn’t stopped 345 million other people from watching it. In this case, it’s not even about the content. I’m sure lots of non-Bieber fans have watched the video, just to see what all the fuss is about.

Videos do not always go viral because of their content. Sure, Double Rainbow was kind of funny, and odd, but at a certain point, people just watched because they were curious. They heard about it from a friend who heard about it from a friend and so on. They almost HAD to watch it, just to make sure they were in the loop around the water cooler on Monday.

Does this mean you should post fluff content in an effort to win over more eyeballs? Of course not. Substance always wins. Why? Because Justin Bieber and Double Rainbow Guy are flash in the pan. In 5 years, The Biebs’ voice will have changed and no one will care. Double Rainbow Guy, well, he’s already pretty much a has-been. You, on the other hand, if you’re still cranking out good stuff in 5 years? You’ll still be here, and probably doing better than ever.

Viewers are a fickle bunch.
I know, because I am one. One day, I’ll think Iron Chef is the best show on TV. Then I will proceed to not watch it for 6 months, because something else has grabbed my interest, and I only have so much time in my week to consume TV.

Blog posts can be like that. Sometimes, I’ll slave away, carefully crafting a piece that I think is fantastic….and hardly anyone will read it, or comment. Other days, I’ll whiz something off in 10 minutes, post it, and be overwhelmed by the response. Am I accusing my readers of being fickle? Perhaps, but that’s okay – we are all pulled in 1000 different directions nowadays by content and information. Fickleness is about the only way one can really navigate out here. I’m not taking it personally, and neither should you.

Just because you post things that nobody notices, doesn’t mean you should stop doing it. Plenty of TV shows and movies have been made that have flopped. In fact, more TV shows and movies DON’T succeed than do. It’s okay to have a floppy post. I have lots of flops that I am still terribly proud of.

Don’t let others’ distracted ways hold you back from continuing to express yourself. Just keep doing it.

Like “Who Shot J.R”, maybe you’ll end up on a T-Shirt someday, and maybe millions of people will know who you are. Or maybe you will only make your Dad, your Aunt Alice, your husband or your kids proud. Either way, keep loving the work that you do, and keep doing it to the best of your ability.

You may not have all the eyeballs in the world seeing your stuff – but then again, is that really the most important thing?

[Source for all TV rating numbers is Wikipedia]

[Photo credit: stewf on Flickr]

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I came across a great article on Brain Pickings.org the other day, featuring the Canadian icon of media thought, Marshall McLuhan. You may know McLuhan best for his famous quote “The medium is the message”. I’ve studied McLuhan for about as long as I’ve been involved in media and communications, and if you’re a media maker and communicator, you need to study him too.

McLuhan was a man well before his time. He pioneered new ways of thinking about how we communicate. I often wonder how McLuhan, who died in 1980, would have reacted to the Internet and new media. I think he would have been amazed, and probably would have done a fair bit of “I told you so”, too.

Watch the video below, it’s 8 minutes of vintage CBC gold, and listen carefully to what McLuhan says.

Interesting, eh? Did you think you were listening to someone from the 21st century speak? I did, the first time. I had to remind myself that piece was filmed in 1964. But what McLuhan says still holds today. Check it out.

It’s all about tribes. McLuhan brings up the concept of Tribes early on. He talks of us “banging the tribal drum” and how these new media (which at that time consisted of radio and TV) enabled us to have a voice and share our messages to wide audiences. TV and radio were the birth of one-to-many communication. When electronic media came along, the tribal drums started banging and we never looked back. Seth Godin talks of building Tribes around things that we are passionate about, and that those tribes will spin off other tribes, and that’s how people change the world. McLuhan heard the drums 50 years ago. Today, they are banging louder than ever. You can hear them, right?

Senses. In McLuhan’s book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (the book from which the famous quote comes), he talks about how different forms of media enhance our senses differently – how film enhances our sense of vision, and that due to that enhancement we don’t have to work very hard to make up the rest. Radio, audio – similarly enhances our hearing sense, and our brain is able to attach the corresponding pictures to the sounds. But just look at the Web. Audio, video, text, every combination therein, coming at us all at once! It’s an intensely sensory experience, and it’s enhancing everything at once sometimes. No wonder it’s been challenging for people to find the best ways to communicate and connect in this space. There’s so much to offer the senses, but as McLuhan says – people’s understanding of the message is as much about how it is conveyed as the message itself. Chew on that for a bit. He was right.

Think differently. McLuhan goes on to talk about how electronic media affects us – “…the media is at the heart of our lives, because the media affects our senses.” He believed that media was not on the fringes of life, but that it was central to our lives…whether books, TV or radio, we got our ideas about life from what we read, watched or heard. And that the influence of media caused us to think differently. It had a profound effect, good or bad, on everything in our lives.

Digital natives. That’s a new term for a concept McLuhan was talking about in 1964. At the end of the video (which unfortunately is cut off), McLuhan starts to describe the difference between a teenager and an adolescent (which in my estimation he means young adult – 19-25 ish?). Young adults in the 1960s were born at a time when TV was still new. Teenagers at that time had never known life without TV. This created a difference in the way they perceived and dealt with the medium. Today, we are living in a time where the digital natives and GenY’s are the same as the teenagers and kids of the 1960s. They were born into a world with computers. Some were not alive before there was an Internet. The rest of us, the GenXers and Boomers, had to come into it. We remember well a time before we had the Web. My 9 year old nephew has never known life without mobile phones and email.

What does this mean? Well in McLuhan’s estimation, it means we’re going to have to think very carefully about how we’re making tools for the generations coming up behind us. They don’t have as far to travel on the road as we do. Just like TV was second nature to me when I was a kid, the Internet is second nature to them. And perception is everything.

And McLuhan? Well, he was right again.

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I have to get something off my chest. I’m going to try not to sound too ranty, and I really do want to know what you think (especially if you don’t agree).

We live in a culture of Free. Free is not bad. But, in order for social business to be successful, many attitudes are going to need to change.

What I love most about new media is that the barrier to entry is extremely low. Anyone with an Internet connection, a keyboard and an idea is welcome to the party. Anyone can create, share and be brilliant, in their own way. What people build out here has enriched my life and continues to blow my mind on a daily basis. I love that I have access to all of this brilliance for free. I absorb it like a sponge, and share it like it’s candy. You should be doing the same. After all, it’s free.

It’s wonderful that all of this amazing content is free, but we’re starting to develop some bad habits. Unfortunately, our beautiful Culture of Free has started to become an Expectation of Free. And that’s a problem. A big problem.

There’s life beyond free. Every morning, I grab a cup of coffee, and dive head first into my Google Reader (or in my case, Feedly, which, if you’re not using yet, you really should be). Inside this space, I’m blessed with the most incredible content from some of the smartest people I know. I get to read, watch, listen and learn new ideas, concepts, and wisdom, all for free. More than that, I get to freely share it with my friends. I can’t say enough good things about it.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a growing sense of entitlement in some camps, that those who share for free, should continue to do so in all aspects of their work. I see evidence of this on a daily basis, and it’s alarming.

I write this blog for free. I contribute to other blogs for free. I tweet for free. I share stuff on Facebook for free too. I do it because I enjoy sharing what’s in my brain, and because some of you seem to enjoy receiving it. The thing is, even though no money is changing hands, each day when you come to my content, you’re performing a transaction with me. I’m delivering content. You are using it. For some reason, what I’m providing is worth something to you. In this case, it’s your time. And that’s totally fine. We are both getting something out of our transaction with each other.

Where the line begins to blur is when I move over into the world of the “not free”. You see, all of this is my job. This blog, my other online presences, my company, my teaching, my consulting work, my speaking engagements…they all take work. I tend to not make a distinction between what I get paid to do and what I don’t. I think many of us who work in this business (for money) do much the same.

What I’m observing is, somewhat with myself and more often with other people who do the same things I do, that lots of people are misunderstanding where the boundary of free vs. not free is. And I totally get why it’s confusing. We’re pushing all this free content out. Then suddenly, when we start asking for money, people start to wonder what we’re doing differently to no longer be just giving it away. They scrutinize our motives, and dig harder to find the value.

I have cats to feed. So where is the line? Well, that’s even more tricky. It’s different for everyone. Some people have massive volumes of traffic to their blogs and Twitter and subsequently to their email inboxes. I’m not really one of those people. I get plenty of requests, but certainly not to the scale of some people I know. Scalability aside, it’s important to understand personally where the line between free and paid is. I have absolutely no issue with responding to questions on Twitter, comments on my blog, the occasional email, or even going for a quick coffee and chat (which I love to do). I love people, and it makes me happy when I can provide a bit of info that is helpful.  But for me, free ends once a certain amount of my time is being used. If someone is asking for a significant amount of my time, whether it’s through back and forth emails, incessant Direct Messages on Twitter, or coffee after coffee pick-your-brain sessions with no real goal in sight, then things start to change. (I have, by the way, had all of these things happen at one time or another, as I’m sure many of you have.) At that point, it has to become more than just a transaction of time. After all, I have cats to feed. So please, please PLEASE…don’t be taken aback when I let you know politely that in order for us to continue our transaction, you’ll need to pay me. Remember, this is my job.

But…(and there’s always a but), there are exceptions to this, as with everything. There are certain times when the transaction of free stands. These are my personal reasons (yours, and others’, may be different):

1) You’re one of my students. As your teacher, it’s my responsibility to be there to help you learn. So ask away. Invite me for coffee. Find me on Skype. But if you’re not my student? Please don’t ask me to record my lectures and make them available to you online for free. My students pay their own hard earned money to be in that classroom. Many of them sacrifice a lot to be there. They are paying for the content, so it’s not fair if you ask to have it for free.

2) You’re involved in doing good work that I believe in. I am honoured that I get asked to speak at events. I get to share things,  improve my public speaking skills, and meet some great new people. I often get to talk about causes I’m involved with, like 12for12k. I get to share with young people, businesswomen, and amazing non-profits. This work I often do for free, because I believe in what these folks are doing, and if I can in any small way make a contribution that’s valuable, then I’m thrilled to help. But I have a line there too. This one’s always case by case basis.

It’s a whole new world. Free is what makes the Internet go round, that’s a fact. But there are lots and lots of people who are working very hard to make a living out here. If you’re here, you’re likely one of them (unless you’re my Mom – she’s retired). No other industry that I can think of has ever offered so much tremendous value for free. And the beauty is, if you want to stay in the free space, you have every right to do so. But, there’s a certain point when your needs and goals may require your transaction with the businesspeople out here to become about more than just that free time and information. Either way, it’s totally okay. But do know that the culture of free is transforming. And also know that it’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s only going to enhance everyone’s experience in the end, as far as I can tell, because we’re attaching a new type of value to what people know and do well out here.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

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Let me start this one by saying first off that I don’t consider myself a feminist. There. We got that out of the way.

I have spent the majority of my career in male-dominated professions. I’ve been the only female camera operator in media scrums (elbows up!), the only woman on the web development team, and the only woman in the boardroom more times than I can count. I’ve been mocked, teased, and patronized for being the “girl”, “young lady”, and “sweetheart” in all-guy situations. It’s given me a thick skin and some great lessons about how to earn and keep the respect of my peers.

Which is all the more reason why the recent uprising against the Vanity Fair Article “America’s Tweethearts” gets way, way under my skin.

Here’s a brief synopsis, in case you had something better to do. Vanity Fair published an article featuring “The Women of Twitter”, starring Internet celebrities Julia Roy , Sarah Evans, Stefanie Michaels, Felicia Day, Sarah Austin, and Amy Jo Martin. All of these women are successful entrepreneurs, actresses and marketing professionals in their own right. The article was definitely not spun to be an in-depth look at this group of savvy, professional, up and coming young women. It read more like a high school gossip column with a few dippy head bobs thrown in for good measure (like, ok, ok?).

Flash forward to actress Felicia Day (she’s featured front and centre in the sexy photograph heading up the article) posting on her blog entitled “Disappointment”, her utter shock and dismay at what a lousy and unfair portrayal this article was of these six high profile and successful women. “But what really ENRAGED me what [sic] the general tone, which artfully made intelligent, articulate women sound vapid and superficial.”, said she.

Day is in utter disbelief that Vanity Fair writer Vanessa Grigoriadis “…obviously wasn’t well-researched about the service, or the internet in general, really.” She’s in shock that this writer chose to paint her and her friends in a less-than respectable light, making them out to be bimbos getting by on looks alone and not for their actual smarts in the ways of the Interwebz.

And herein lies the problem.

First, Ms. Day is expecting that Vanity Fair is going to do a smart, insightful, in-depth article on the intelligent, savvy women that are “leading the charge” in the online world. Ahem. It’s Vanity Fair. Not sure if you’re read it recently, but “in-depth” and “insightful” are not the first things that come to mind. Vanity Fair is in the business of selling magazines, and to do that they put shirtless Tiger Woods on the cover and photos of trenchcoat-only wearing Web Grrlz on the inside. Sex sells. If these women wanted to have a serious and insightful look into what it takes to be a young, up and coming female entrepreneur in the Internet Age, then getting a spread in Vanity Fair was probably not the way to go.

Second, they should have been tipped off during the “dream come true” photo shoot that something was up. Especially when they had to put on trench coats and nothing else. I don’t know about you, but the last time I was taken seriously in a board room I was clothed on the lower half of my body. Oh, I can hear it now. “Prude!!!”. Nope. I’m not a prude. I’m all for being well turned out. I like to look nice. That’s why I get my hair done and wear eyeliner and buy nice clothes. But if you want to truly be taken seriously as a “businesswoman”, then being naked under a trenchcoat for a magazine article is sending mixed signals, and that’s that.

Finally, being popular in social media is not automatically a sign that you are a successful, career-oriented woman. The one thing I vehemently disagree with in the article is their portrayal of success being directly linked to the number of followers one has. The reporter seems really hung up on the numbers thing, and makes it seem like the only reason these women are successful is because they have lots of people hanging on their every word. Well that may be partially true, but I appreciate that these women probably work very hard and would likely be having success even if it wasn’t for their self described “Twitter addictions”.

In the end, it’s really about self respect. If, as a woman, you want to be successful in business, then do good work, and earn the respect and trust of others. It’s okay to be attractive. It’s totally fine to be feminine. In fact, those are endearing qualities. But don’t put yourself in situations where people will be enticed to look at you as a sex object if you don’t want to be perceived that way. And don’t be disappointed if a magazine famous for doing fluff pieces doesn’t take you seriously.

Your turn. Have at it in the comments. I’m ducking!

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Just a few thoughts I had after a lovely evening with an old friend.

Old Friends. New Media. from Sue Murphy on Vimeo.

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